Worth the Risk

by K. Bromberg

  And I hate that for a second time with a similar woman, I’ve let my guard down.

  “It’s Grayson.”

  “Hi. What’s up?” The smile is automatic when I hear his voice. I look over to the photographer, who is setting up her reflectors and staging out shots, and then down at my watch. “Where are you?”

  “I can’t make it.”

  “What?” It’s a half-laugh, half-panicked sound.

  “I can’t make it,” he repeats matter-of-factly.

  “The vote is in less than twenty-four hours. I need to get these shots of you, so I can put them up on the site.” Desperation edges my tone. I’ve pushed this deadline as far as I can and still be able to get the magazine to the printer on time. I have no more wiggle room. The website is more forgiving of the time constraints, but not the print side.

  “Are you giving everyone else the same personal attention you’re giving me?” His question throws me.

  “No. Why? They’re turning in their own photos.”

  “Then do the same for me. I’m sure there are plenty of photos from the other night you can use.” There’s a bite to his words that has my head startling. “No doubt you had photographers staged throughout the pub to snap the perfect picture.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.” He sighs as I look at everyone around me. They are all trying not to be obvious about eavesdropping, curious who I’m talking to as they wait for Grayson to arrive.

  “Grayson?”

  He grunts. “Find a picture from the other night. It’s that simple.”

  “It isn’t the same.” I make the comment and then cringe because it is the same. It should be the same, but it isn’t. Photographs from the hero party are not what Rissa is expecting. Grayson’s biography forged by me, even less so. The spots I’ve worked tirelessly to secure with E! News Daily and Entertainment Tonight are expecting professional pictures, not Sunnyville Gazette cast-offs.

  “Make it the same. This isn’t my thing. You’ve forced my hand enough, and I’m done when it comes to you.”

  The rejection is instantaneous, and panic has me responding without thinking. “I should’ve known you were full of crap when you agreed to do this. Do you know how this screws me up?”

  “Fucking typical.” His chuckle is full of derision. “Regardless of what you might think, not everything is about you, Princess.”

  “Fine. Great.” I think of the photographer I’m going to have to pay for lost time. I think of my promise to Rissa, and my conversation with my dad.

  I blink my welling tears away and tell myself that they’re there because I don’t want to let people down and not because I feel personally rejected.

  Or used.

  He said he wanted me.

  How was I not supposed to think about that? How was I not supposed to obsess over those words to the point I slipped my fingers under the waistband of my panties and put them to work while I thought of him last night.

  It was just a kiss, Sidney. He didn’t reject you. He didn’t anything you, so stop overthinking. Don’t fall off the estrogen-edged deep end thinking this is about you when he’s simply talking about participating in the contest.

  “Not all of us get to come and go on a whim like you. I don’t have time for this in my life. Not in the least.”

  “Time for what? What do you mean?”

  “This. The photo and the goddamn contest. Us. The kiss. Me wanting you. It was a huge mistake, and your response a few seconds ago just made it more than clear why it was.”

  “Grayson, I—”

  “I’ve gotta go.”

  The call ends, and I’m left standing in the middle of a photo shoot that isn’t going to take place. I stare at my cell phone, not really knowing what the hell just happened, and eventually come to the realization that I never really knew I wanted there to be an us until the door shut in my damn face.

  Talk about screwing myself on all fronts. And not in the good way.

  Shit.

  What am I going to do now?

  If there is any silver lining in my day, it’s that when I walk out of the Sunnyville Gazette’s office an hour later, I have a thumb-drive full of photos of Grayson I can possibly use for our site. No, they aren’t of him in his flight suit with the front unzipped like I’d planned. Yes, I had to deal with the searching comments from the gossip columnist about whether I really needed the pictures just for the contest.

  But I have them.

  At least there’s that.

  I meet him stare for stare. His eyes hold so much depth, but the angry red mark on his cheekbone stands out bright against his olive complexion.

  “Fighting isn’t the way to solve a problem,” I say to Luke. On the inside, a part of me wants to give him a high five for doing it, and another part of me wants to pull him against me to protect him from the cruelty of other kids. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” It’s the same question I’ve asked three other times. In the school’s office. In the car. In the driveway once we were home.

  “No.”

  “Mr. Malone, there’s been an incident here at school. You need to come and get Luke.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s been in a fight.”

  My laugh filled the line. “You’re kidding, right? My Luke?”

  “I’m sad to say I’m not kidding. We have a zero-tolerance policy for fights.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Luke, buddy, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what happened. You’ve sat here for the past two hours, now it’s time to talk.”

  “Nothing happened.” He spits the words out at me, but his bottom lip quivers.

  “Hi. What’s up?” Sidney’s voice filled the line and aggravated every single part of me—good and bad. “Where are you?”

  “I can’t make it.”

  “What?” The superior tone in her voice sliced open my temper, the intonation implying no one ever cancels on her and she didn’t quite know how to handle it.

  “I can’t make it.” Deal with it.

  I think back to what a day it’s been so far, and hell if I’m not sitting here at seven o’clock at night, trying to coax my eight-year-old to explain what happened. All I got out of the principal was that it had to do with that goddamn photo in the paper, some teasing, and then Luke threw the first punch.

  I try again.

  “Something happened, or you wouldn’t have hit him.”

  “I told you, nothing happened.”

  Christ. I shove a hand through my hair and walk to one end of the room and back. This is something Grant should be doing. He’s the cop. Skilled at interrogations. I should call him to come do the dirty work for me—play bad cop so I can be good cop—because this parenting shit is for the birds.

  “Fine. Then nothing is going to happen for you, either. No baseball this weekend. No sleepover at George’s house. No—”

  “He asked me if the lady you were kissing in the paper was my mom.” His voice is so quiet I can barely hear him.

  “What?” I ask, even though I heard him perfectly well.

  “I told him no. I didn’t know what picture he was talking about. He laughed and said you weren’t going to get married, and it was because of me. How could she want to be my mom when my own didn’t love me enough to stick around? Is that what you wanted to know?” He shoves the chair back so hard it falls to the floor, making a sickening thud.

  Angry tears well in his eyes. His little body shakes with anger, and his fists are clenched so tightly his fingers are turning bloodless. All I can do is stare at him—my heart broken, my head more than fucked up.

  “That’s a lie.” No parenting award for that one, but it’s all I can muster as I sit and watch my little man.

  “Then where is she?” he screams at me as the first tear slips down his cheek. “If she loves me like you say she does, then how come she never comes home? How come she never calls me? How come all the
other kids’ moms love them and do things with them and mine doesn’t? How come she doesn’t want me?”

  I catch him as he tries to run past me. I take a hit to my shoulder and kick to my thigh as I pick him up and hold him to me as tightly as I can. The agony I feel as a parent is a hundred times more painful than any hit or kick of his ever could be, so I squeeze him with every ounce of love I have until his struggles turn to sobs and his hands fist in my shirt. His tears are hot through the fabric.

  I was warned this phase would come, by the psychologist I talked to after Claire left. By the friends I’ve met whose husbands stepped out of their children’s lives during their infancy. The rage and the hurt and the sense of unworthiness. No amount of warning could have prepared me for hitting this head-on.

  All the hate, all the hurt, all the everything Claire made me feel when she left . . . it’s like someone took a truckload of dynamite and detonated it, with all of the debris falling and landing on Luke.

  There’s no way in hell I can protect him from it.

  No fucking way.

  “You know that isn’t true.” I will repeat the lie as long as I can to make my son feel better about himself. It won’t work much longer, and every time I mutter it, I feel like more and more of a complete asshole.

  “Did you know the day you were born was the best day of my life?” I murmur into the crown of his head as he hiccups with sobs. “Your mom was eating a piece of chocolate cake, and all of a sudden, you let her know you were ready to meet us.”

  “But she finished eating her cake first.” His voice is muffled, but he’s calmed some.

  This is our routine. A set of memories to let him know he came into this world being loved. With parents who wanted him.

  “Yes. She loved chocolate cake.”

  “Just like I do.”

  “Mm-hmm.” I think back to the panic. The excitement. The wonder of that day. “We ran around excited, getting everything together and getting to the hospital. Then, a few hours later, you were crying so loud when they put you in your momma’s arms.”

  “And you were crying, too.”

  “I was.” Looking back, I can see the panic on her face and the uncertainty that I thought was a normal thing because I felt it, too. We were responsible for this perfect little human. We were his smiles, his reassurance, his everything. How was I to know that look was a sign of what was to come? “And even though we’d only officially met you a whole five minutes before, we both knew we’d never loved anything as much as we loved you.”

  Silence lingers as the story I’ve told countless times replays in both of our minds in completely different ways.

  “If she loved me, why did she leave?” His whisper wavers.

  “She still loves you, Luke. She loves you with all her heart, but sometimes, people are afraid they aren’t going to be enough for their child. They think that being around will hurt their kid more than help them.”

  “If she loved me, she’d know that leaving was going to hurt me more than her being here.”

  I sigh, knowing his words are true but needing to reinforce the narrative I’ve created over the years so he doesn’t feel unworthy.

  “I know, but as a parent, you have to make hard decisions. Decisions that feel wrong but are for the right reason. That’s why she sends you birthday presents. She wants you to know she’s thinking of you and loves you. She wants to make sure you know how much you mean to her.”

  I can’t look him in the eyes when he looks up. He’ll see the lie there. He’ll know it’s me sending him the gifts. That it’s me making him feel like a normal little boy with a mom who loves him instead of one who abandoned him because God for-fucking-bid the precious Hoskins’ bloodline be tainted by a blue-collar worker like me. It’s me working my ass off to sell the lie because telling him his mother was more worried about her inheritance and taking her parents’ yacht to Cannes than being a mom.

  We shift some so that he sits cradled in my lap and his head rests against my chest. His breath still hitches, but I can tell the tears are done for now.

  “Who was the woman in the photo?” he asks, circling back to the newspaper article.

  “Just a friend.” I don’t tell him it’s Sidney. He’s met her. He’s asked about her. Telling him who it was will only make him more curious when there is nothing there for him to be curious about.

  “Why were you kissing her?”

  “It was her way of thanking me for something. In other countries, that’s how you do it.” And the award for Liar of the Year goes to Grayson Malone. “You kiss both sides of their cheeks.”

  “Oh.” His voice falls. “It was just the cheek? He didn’t say that.”

  “Yes, just her cheek.” I’m going to hell. Plain and simple. Especially when I’ve thought about that kiss more than I should have.

  “So, she isn’t going to be my new mom?”

  I chuckle to try to add some levity. “No, buddy. We’ve been over this before. A kiss doesn’t mean someone marries someone. It doesn’t even mean they love someone—I mean it does—but . . . just hear me out.” I fumble, my own head fucked-up over seeing the pain in his eyes. “Sometimes people like each other and they are lonely and need a friend. They go on dates to do things together.”

  “They kiss.”

  “Yes, they sometimes kiss. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to get married. Marriage is something you go into knowing you want to spend the rest of your life with that person. It isn’t something you do after a date or two.”

  “Is that why you and mom weren’t married? Did you know she wasn’t going to be here forever?”

  Of course, from all I said, he picked up on that. “Mom and I weren’t married because of other reasons.”

  “But you loved her, right?”

  “Very much.” I barely get the words out, the animosity almost making me choke on them. “We were planning on getting married . . . but in our case . . . our case was just different.”

  He plucks at his pants with his fingers, his eyes downcast. “Do you miss my mom?”

  No. I hate her more each and every day for doing this to you. For being too selfish to see how incredible you are. For not fighting for you. For not choosing you.

  “You always have a choice.”

  Sidney’s words are right there in my ears, and I hate them as much as I need to hear them.

  “Of course I do. I miss her mostly because I think she’d love to see how awesome you are.”

  “I wish I knew her.”

  When he looks at me this time, I meet his gaze head-on. My lips want to tell him she doesn’t deserve to meet him and know how incredible he is. She doesn’t warrant the time I take to write cards to him with different penmanship so he thinks they are from her. She doesn’t merit a goddamn thing when it comes to my son.

  “You do know her. She’s a part of you, just like I am. No matter how far away she is, that will never change.” I press a kiss to the top of his head and pick another memory to tell him about, when, really, I need to address him punching someone today. “There was this one time when you were a baby . . .”

  So, we sit there, letting the evening fade to night as I retell Luke stories about memories he’ll never remember on his own. Stories that every kid should know about their life. Stories that let him know how much he is loved even though his mom isn’t here.

  When his giggles subside and his soft snores fill the room, I sit with him for a while and can’t help but despise Claire even more when I thought I hated her enough. Then I carry him upstairs, forgo the brushing of his teeth, and put him into my bed.

  Then I watch him sleep.

  I take in the red mark on the cheekbone that has the same line as his mother’s, the subtle dent in his chin that resembles my father, and the freckles over his nose that somehow make him seem more innocent.

  I know that I may be doing the complete wrong thing when it comes to him and the memory of his mother. I may be screwing him up more than I’m he
lping him with these stories and lies and that someday, he may hate me because of it. But if him hating me is the price I am going to have to pay for giving him these small moments of peace, then I’ll pay it. They make him feel whole and loved and worthy of that love, so fuck anyone who tells me I’m in the wrong.

  Parenting is a succession of brutal decisions, each one tougher than the last, with the only goal being not to fuck up your kid any more than you already have.

  It’s much later, after I’ve had a couple of beers and sat on the porch swing alone, that I crawl into bed beside my son with the knowledge that no matter what Claire did or didn’t do, I have one thing to be thankful to her for.

  Luke.

  He’s the reason I keep fighting.

  “You should take the rest of the day off, Rissa. I’ll cover the office.”

  She looks at me as if I’ve grown two heads. “Why?”

  “Because the third round of voting is a go. We’ve already had more traffic in the first few hours than we did in the first week of last round’s vote. And because . . . because it’s sunny outside. Do we need another reason?”

  “Maybe because you’re trying to get me out of here so I don’t call you on the carpet and ask why Grayson’s bio is the same one I saw you working on in longhand and the photo is from the party?” She lifts her eyebrows and meets my gaze. “Perhaps?”

  “Perhaps, but it was simply a matter of circumstance. We didn’t get him on board until too late and”—the look she gives me stops me in my tracks—“and I’ll stop my excuse about now.” She gives a measured nod. “I can’t control someone else. All I can do is cajole and persuade and inform and do my best. So, while I try to get all that to work, I’m busy trying to master all the other things you’ve told me are important to know.”

  She crosses her arms over her chest and leans back in her chair. “Such as?”

  “Edie is showing me the process by which she goes through editing content. Fran has put together a little tutorial on graphics and resizing because I struggle there, and in turn, I’m explaining how I track my progress through the statistics, so she understands. Then there’s—”